French Section of The Workers' International - From The 1920 Tours Congress To The Popular Front

From The 1920 Tours Congress To The Popular Front

In 1924 and in 1932, the Socialists joined with the Radicals in the Cartel des Gauches coalition. They supported the government led by Radical Édouard Herriot (1924–1926 and 1932), but they didn't participate.

The first Cartel saw the right-wing terrorised, and capital flight destabilised the government, while the divided Radicals didn't all support their Socialist allies. The monetary crisis, also due to the refusal of Germany to pay the World War I reparations, caused parliamentary instability. Édouard Herriot, Paul Painlevé and Aristide Briand would succeeded each other as president of the Council until 1926, when the French political right came back to power with Raymond Poincaré. The newly elected communist deputies also opposed the first Cartel, refusing to support "bourgeois" governments.

The second Cartel acceded to power in 1932, but this time, the SFIO only gave their support without the participation of the Radicals, which allied themselves with right-wing radicals. After years of internal feuds the reformist wing of the party, led by Marcel Déat and Pierre Renaudel, split from the SFIO in November 1933 to form a neosocialist movement, and merged with the PRS into form the Socialist Republican Union (USR). The Cartel was again the victim of parliamentary instability, while various scandals led to the 6 February 1934 riots organised by far-right leagues. Radical Édouard Daladier resigned on the next day, handing out the power to conservative Gaston Doumergue. It was the first time during the Third Republic (1871–1940) that a government had to resign because of street pressure.

Following 6 February 1934 crisis, which the whole of the socialist movement saw as a fascist conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, a goal pursued by the royalist Action Française and other far-right leagues, anti-fascist organisations were created. The French Communist Party (PCF), supported by the Comintern's abandoning of the "social-fascism" directives in favor of "united front" directives, got closer to the SFIO, the USR and the Radical Party, to form the coalition that would win the 1936 elections and bring about the Popular Front. In June 1934, Leon Trotsky proposed the "French Turn" into the SFIO, which is where the entrism strategy takes its origins from. The trotskyist Communist League's (the French section of the International Left Opposition) leaders were divided over the issue of entering the SFIO: Raymond Molinier was the most supportive of Trotsky's proposal, while Pierre Naville was opposed to it and Pierre Frank remained ambivalent. The League finally voted to dissolve into the SFIO in August 1934, where they formed the Bolshevik-Leninist Group (Groupe Bolchevik-Leniniste, GBL). At the Mulhouse party congress of June 1935, the Trotskyists led a campaign to prevent the United Front from expanding into a "Popular Front", which would include the liberal Radical Party.

However, the Popular Front strategy was adopted and, in the 1936 election, the coalition became majority and, for the first time, the SFIO obtained more votes and seats than the Radical Party. In this, Léon Blum became France's first Socialist President of the Council in 1936, while the PCF supported - without participation - his government. A general strike applauded the socialists' victory, while Marceau Pivert cried "Tout est possible!" ("Everything is possible!"). Pivert would later split and create the Workers and Peasants' Socialist Party (PSOP); historian Daniel Guérin was also a member of the latter. Trotsky advised the GBL to break with the SFIO, leading to a confused departure by the Trotskyists from the Socialist Party in early 1936, which drew only about six hundred people from the party. The 1936 Matignon Accords set up collective bargaining, and removed all obstacles to union organisation. The terms included a blanket 7-12 percent wage increase, and allowed for paid vacation (2 weeks) and a 40-hour work week — the eight-hour day had been established following the 1914-18 war of attrition and its mobilisation of industrial capacities.

Within a year, however, Blum's government collapsed over economic policy (as during the Cartel des gauches, capital flight was an issue, giving rise to the so-called "myth of the 200 hundreds families") in the context of the Great Depression, and also over the issue of the Spanish Civil War. The demoralised left fell apart and was unable to resist the collapse of the Third Republic after the military defeat of 1940 (during World War II).